5/1 Video and Free Downloads to Keep You Entertained

Long overdue for some video here (click the links below) – comes in handy when there’s a massive update to the monthly NYC live music calendar going on. Out of all the months, the May calendar is the biggest bitch to pull together since all the summer festivals are being announced. So before all this gets stale, here goes, a handful of the best tracks to come over the transom here over the last few months.

Mike Rimbaud offers a sympathetic shout to the guy or girl in front of all the kids with Ritalin or Prozac-fried brains in Teacher’s Got a Bad Mouth, and sends a dis out to the lords of Wall Street with Big Bad Bully. Both tracks from his most recent album Midnight Rainbow.

Noir Britrocker Mike Marlin – who’s at the Highline on June 3 at 8 opening for what’s left of the Stranglers – offers a creepy free download, The Murderer, from his forthcoming solo album. Alec K Redfearn & the Eyesores’ The 7 & 6 - from their phenonenal 2012 album – is even creepier.

Lisbon Street, by Her Majesty is another freebie, a theatrical, psychedelic soul tune with fado overtones.

Beans on Toast’s Beer & a Burger is sort of British Steve Earle or Joe Pug – a sardonic, savagely cynical blue-collar acoustic punk anthem.

Yellow Red Sparks’ A Play to End All Plays is cynical doomed druggie Waitsish oldtimey circus rock. They’re at Union Hall in Park Slope on May 17 at around 10.

Army Navy’s Pickle is total mid-80s Brit-jangle except that they’re from California – an irresistibly clanging, ringing anthemic pop gem.

And here’s another killer free download, Pinknoizu’s Tin Can Valley, a twisted Middle Eastern flavored surf rock tune.

An Auspicious Kickoff to Daphne Lee Martin’s Late Winter Tour

Midway through a rather ominous minor-key reggae song, Daphne Lee Martin’s keyboardist played most of a verse from Besame Mucho, using a glockenspiel setting to max out the menace. That was one of the high points of her show last night at the Way Station in Fort Greene, the unlikely setting for the first stop on her current tour which winds its way down to South by Southwest. Once word of her new album Moxie gets out, it’s not likely she’ll be playing places like the Way Station. She and her fantastic band Raise the Rent did most of that album, in sequence, with an exuberant expertise to match its eclectic style. Martin’s down-to-earth, uncluttered but finely nuanced alto voice might remind you of June Christy or Erica Smith, which makes sense since she and Smith were bandmates around the turn of the past century.

Martin and her five-piece band opened with Sweet & Low Down, a pulsing noir blues fueled by creepy funeral organ and then a fiery Strat solo from the lead guitarist that exploded in a frenzy of tremolo-picking as he went up the scale. The minor-key noir mood lingered through their second number, Whiskey & Sin, a luridly grim waltz, sort of a House of the Setting Sun: some girl in the crowd let out a scream timed perfectly to the end of the first verse as it reached a peak. Belly, a strutting vintage 70s-style soul groove, first fueled by echoey Rhodes piano and then woozily hilarious Dr. Dre-style synth, was next. Martin and band picked up the pace from there with the uneasily swinging House That Built Itself, lit up by some more bitingly bluesy lead guitar, then went scampering through Molotov with a torchy gypsy jazz-inflected intensity. Most of the night, Martin’s vocals were too low in the mix to reveal the level of detail that she typically brings to a song, but this one was a showcase for some unselfconsciously spine-tingling blue notes and melismas.

The next number, a duet with the keyboardist, had a planitive flamenco-rock feel, like the skeleton frame of an early Firewater song; then the bass and drums agilely transformed it into roots reggae in a split second. New London, Connecticut, where Martin and band have made their home for the last few years, has had a fertile music scene since the recently, tragically reduced Reducers first came up in the 80s: it’s good to see such a fantastic band representing that city on the road.

Rita Shifts the Paradigm at the United Nations

“Only dreamers can do changes in the world,” Israeli rock star Rita reminded the crowd as she exited the stage after an exhilarating, politically radical, hourlong set for a private audience seemingly composed of dignitaries, their guests and a scattering of media at the United Nations General Assembly hall last night. Her English may have been slightly fractured, but she left no doubt in the tone of her voice. Rita is as big in Israel as Madonna was at the peak of her popularity here in the US; she is just as popular in Iran. Her dream: peace in the Middle East. On one hand, the pressure on her to cave in to partisan politics must be enormous, especially for someone whose family escaped a brutally repressive regime in her native Iran for the democracy of Israel when she was eight. On the other hand, she refuses to give up on that dream. Last night marked the historic occasion that a performer had ever sung in both Persian and Hebrew on the same night at the UN, but it also might have been the first time that anyone ever spoke those two languages side by side in public there. To see ten Israelis onstage singing lustily in Persian – the langauge of their country’s sworn enemy – was radical to the extreme. And this was with the blessing of the Israeli ambassador, who acceded that it had always been his “dream to open for Rita,” and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who described Rita as “A reminder of the role of music to transcend cultures, build bridges and connect people. Instead of global hegemony, global harmony!”

And the audience ate it up! They seemed to know all the words, whether or in Persian or Hebrew, sang along, and by the end of the show there was a lively circle of dancers gathered at the front of the stage. This wasn’t some small posse of peaceniks from the kibbutz hanging out in a cramped Tel Aviv basement: the auditorium was packed with a mainstream, monied Israeli crowd. Nor was the music bland, tepid pop: in Israel, Rita may be top 40, but her band’s closest American musical equivalent is Gogol Bordello. Laughable as it may seem, from an American perspective, to imagine such a cutting-edge, haunting blend of Middle Eastern folk themes and epic art-rock as Rita plays getting airplay on commercial radio, it’s an everyday thing in Israel. That general, mainstream listeners would not only accept but embrace this music makes the idea of dropping bombs on the people of Israel, or the people of Iran, all the more repulsive. Rita self-effacingly hinted more than once that she would have liked to be singing something other than love songs, but it didn’t matter: her message couldn’t have been more clear, or vividly shared.

About the music: it was brilliant. The concert began with a long, plaintively crescendoing improvisation played by Mark Eliyahu on the Persian  kamancheh fiddle over an ominous keyboard drone – this is not how Madonna starts her shows. It finally picked up with a lush majesty over a swaying dance beat and in a split second the crowd was clapping along. The show ended with Yeladem Zim Sincha (Children Are a Joy), a feral gypsy-rock romp completely at odds with its saccharine title, the band exploding out of a biting Galia Hai viola solo midway through. In between, Rita alternated between her Hebrew-language hits and the vintage Iranian songs on her most recent album My Joys. The most exhilarating solo moment of the night belonged to Jonathan Dror, playing shivery microtones on a genuine rams-horn shofar on the introduction to Hachnisini Tachat Knafech (Under Your Wing), Rita adding her own spine-tingling, chromatically-charged vocalese solo. She gave energetic vocal cameos to rapidfire accordionist Ariel Alaev and eclectically fiery guitarist Ofer Koren; Dror also energized the crowd with his dance moves late in the set. The biggest hit with the crowd, predictably, was Shah Doomad (The Groom King), an ecstatic but rather ferocious wedding song: this guy is something to be reckoned with! To paraphrase what Edward Said said long ago, there is no discrete, exclusionary Middle Eastern culture: there is only Orientalism. As Rita made defiantly clear, it is possible to be both pro-Israel and pro-Iran: we are all in this together, with her. And who wouldn’t want to be?

Kagero’s New Album Is a Blast

Like an awful lot of gypsy rock bands, Kagero model themselves on Gogol Bordello, right down to frontman Kaz Fujimoto’s wry, surreal sense of humor and probably intentionally twisted English syntax. But Kagero’s sound is different. Although their lively minor-key songs are obviously made for dancing and keeping the party going, they’re a mostly acoustic band: other than a handful of electric guitar tracks and occasional keyboards, their lineup is totally acoustic, including a punchy horn section. Their songwriting is more eclectic than most of the rest of the gypsy crew, reaching into oldtime swing, hip-hop and sometimes taking on a little bit of a ska bounce. Any way you slice it, they’re one of New York’s most entertaining bands, as their new album Gumbo du Jour confirms. They’re playing the album release show sometime in the late hours of Feb 2 at Nublu and if you’re going, get there early because the place will be packed. People dance at Kagero shows.

The opening track, Smokin’ on Bali Shag, immediately sets the tone, a violin-fueled retro 20s swing shuffle with a surreal Cockney hip-hop flavor: imagine the Streets fronting Gogol Bordello. Most of it seems to be the random observations of a guy who’s really hungover. Back to Jakarta is a slyly funny look at a global problem: “I like my country but there’s no employment,” says the narrator, asking himself, “Should I stay just five more years, that’s what I said five years ago.”

One of the album’s funniest songs is Rockstar in a Grocery Store: the violin dances down the scale and sets off the tale of a guy who can only afford breakfast in Chinatown and may never be able to take a real vacation, but nothing’s gonna stop him from playing with his band every night. They keep that vibe going (outside of a gorgeously uneasy piano solo) with My Freedom, a look at life from beneath the Manhattan bridge from the point of view of an irrepressible guy who may be “less rich in my pocket but I’m richer in my mind.”

Angel Baby, a wry bossa rock tune, paints a picture of a guy who’s way too drunk to be hitting on the girls – and of course that’s what he does. Life’s a Thrill nicks the lick from Sunny, Bobby Hebb’s big 60s pop hit and turns it into gypsy rock with hip-hop touches and edgy horns. Girl from the Coldest Country recounts how sad it feels to suddenly see your favorite Polish girl bartender, who “was good at making drinks with some strange tropic names,” walk away to hopefully a better life far from her job at 301 West 42nd Street (Port Authority, in case you’re wondering).

The best tune here, the Ukrainian/klezmer-fueled It’s a Perfect Day to Laugh is also the hardest one to figure out, lyrically speaking. The band takes a surprisingly successful detour into funk with Greencard Bride, with its LMAO intro and then a sobering look at the cynical reality of life under the radar. Gypsy Connection celebrates gypsy rock in all its unselfconscious glory: “Yes I’m New York country boy, try to play cool and emotionless but the night is so exuberant.” Lonely Rose Vendor has another funny intro to kick off a bristling, fiery, mariachi-tinged story about the kind of entrepreneur you see late at night trying to cajole happy couples into buying things they really don’t need. The album ends with Song from Africa, a sarcastically funny tune about a possibly homeless busker who’s had enough of the clueless gentrifier girls who pester him to “play that song from Africa.,” and then the hard-hitting Morna, which has a tinge of ska. What a great album: thirteen tracks, all of them excellent, plus you can dance to them. It’s early in the year, but this is contender for best of 2013, right up there with the Brooklyn What and Pete Galub.

Good Imaginative Bands on a Cold Night in Gowanus

For once, a seasonably cold Friday night didn’t keep the Brooklyn massive indoors. Down the block from the trash truck depot at the edge of where Gowanus meets Sunset Park, a boisterously responsive crowd gathered at the unexpectedly lavish, relatively new venue SRB to see two of New York’s most original bands.

Karikatura were first on the bill, playing a slinky mix of latin rock and gypsy rock with some reggae and ska thrown in as well. Their frontman played beats on a conga head on several songs and sang nonchalantly smart, socially conscious lyrics over a fiery horn section (alto or tenor sax plus trombone), plus a guitarist playing biting, often flamenco-tinged lines on a nylon-stringed acoustic-electric over the rhythm section’s eclectic grooves. The most infectious of all the songs was Bailarina, which nicked the riff from the famous Algerian freedom fighter anthem Ya Rayyeh and turned it into an unexpectedly angst-fueled reflection by a guy who’s probably more infatuated with a dancing girl than he should be. It’s too loud to talk over the music, all my friends are drunk and I don’t like the idea of other guys hitting on you, the poor dude laments.

Celi, from the band’s most recent ep, Departures, was more hipswinging and seductive. Shortly after that they went into the edgy reggae liberation anthem Una Idea, a richly bass-heavy track from that release, then brought that idea back toward the end of the set with a soaring version of Some Kind Of (Free), a standout tune from their Muzon ep from a couple of years ago. They finally cut loose and jammed on their last number, with a hard-hitting bass break and then a blazing conversation between tenor sax and trombone. Karikatura are a popular touring act  in Europe and south of the border: it was good to see them on their home turf.

House of Waters are one of the most original bands on the planet. Their name is apt: frontman Max ZT, a national champion on the hammered dulcimer, played intricate, incisively rippling melodies throughout their set alongside cajon player Luke Notary and eight-string bassist Moto Fukushima. On the first song, Fukushima played through an octave pedal for a wry, techy tone that contrasted with the rustic feel of the dulcimer. Their music was as danceable as it was psychedelic: on the occasions when the dulcimer passsed off a rhythmic riff to the cajon, it was sometimes impossible to tell who was playing what. On a couple of tunes, Fukushima hit his pedal for a resonant, djeridoo-like drone; he also meandered through a Jerry Garcia-like solo on the high frets and then a wry disco bassline on one of the last songs. On another, Notary switched to ngoni lute as the drummer from Seth Kessel & the Two Cent Band joined them and played a slinky cumbia groove on guacharaca.

Max ZT is a force of nature and a lot of fun to watch, his hands a blur as he fired off supersonically shuffling licks that sounded almost like a mandolin in places. Bits and pieces of gypsy, Appalachian and soukous melodies rang out and pinged through the mix. The next-to-last song – a track from the band’s Revolution album – was intoxicatingly good, shifting suddenly out of  a slow, moody gypsy-flavored vamp when the band took it doublespeed.

Kessel and his Two Cent Band were scheduled to play their goodnaturedly high-energy oldtimey swing and gypsy jazz at some later point in the evening, but by then it was midnight in Gowanus and time to find out if the trains were still running (they were). Catch you next time, guys – they’re at Union Hall in Park Slope on Feb 2 and then at Radegast Hall in Williamsburg on Feb 6.

Mucca Pazza: An Explosive Carnival of Souls at Globalfest

In their headlining set at Globalfest Sunday night at Webster Hall, Mucca Pazza played what had to be the most exciting, lavishly intense live show by any band in New York in recent months. With zombie apocalypse choreography and a raw, frequently macabre, punked-out brass band sound, the 28-member version of this Chicago circus rock monstrosity careened through a mix of  instrumentals that drew equally on marching band music, the Balkans, horror surf and menacingly cinematic vamps. They used the big split-level space for all it was worth, marching their way in from the balcony, many of the instruments running through battery-powered amps built into the band members’ uniform hats, the players trailed by a ceaselessly energetic crew of cheerleaders who lept gleefully and hoisted each other high above the band when they weren’t flopping into horror-stricken Pompeiian poses. On a couple of occasions, the band split, the brass section scampering from the stage to the balcony and then engaging in a lively call-and-response with the reeds gathered on the sidelines below.

As seemingly chaotic as their antics are, in reality Mucca Pazza are an exceptionally tight, well-rehearsed unit, which an act this size has to be in order to pull off their shtick. The juxtaposition of a bunch of wholesome, athletic, Middle American-looking bunch of guys and girls leaping and grinning against a backdrop of ominous minor keys and monster movie chromatics blasting behind them is surreal to the extreme, and it’s far more disconcerting than it would be if, say, they dressed like dead monks or real apocalyptic zombies (do such things exist? This band makes you think they might). And as entertaining as they are to watch in their non-matching vintage marching band uniforms, ultimately it’s the music (their most recent album Safety Fifth and other releases are streaming online or available for free download at their site) that’s the most exciting part of their act. The surrealism extended to a couple of intros chanted in unison by the cheerleaders: “Embrace absurdity and all that comes with it, good or bad,” seemed to be the message.

One after the other, the songs maintained a creepy carnivalesque atmosphere. A couple seemed to be parodies of happy-go-lucky parade marches; a handful of others were minor-key surf songs turbocharged many times over with roaring brass arrangements. They looked to Serbia or thereabouts a couple of times for pulsing two-chord vamps to bludgeon the audience (or make the cheer squad look as if they’d been bludgeoned); a few of the other tunes had a less gloomy, more lively Mediterranean flavor (the band name is Italian for “crazy cow.”)

One of the best songs got a sobering intro when a member of the band reminded the crowd how brave it must be to go to the school bus stop carrrying a violin – and then the band’s violinist made his way furtively and actually very hauntingly into a wicked gypsy-fueled dance number. Later in the set, guitarist Jeff Thomas led them through a pounding hardcore punk number built on a menacing series of tritone chords, spurring another exodus from the stage by what seemed half the band. The drumline came to the front, the cheer crew and some of the horn players keeled over into mock grotesquerie, and the glockenspiel player and electric mandolinist fired off chillingly strange, ringing solos. Before Mucca Pazza marched in, the impressively large crowd who’d stuck around after five hours of three stages’ worth of gypsy music, brass band funk, latin rock and an early-evening performance by brilliant Iranian composer/spike fiddle player Kayhan Kalhor, were suddenly reinvigorated. Which they should have been: Mucca Pazza are a force of nature. To think that this band actually squeezed themseves into little Public Assembly in Williamsburg a few months ago is as impressive as it is funny. Where this act really ought to be is Broadway, in a big space where they can work their theatrics for all they’re worth.

A Tale of Two Imaginative Sephardic Bands

Deleon and Jaffa Road are two good examples of the current crop of gypsy-flavored rock bands. Both sometimes get pigeonholed as Sephardic bands, but much as each is influenced by global Jewish sounds, each group’s sound is unique and incorporates a vast web of genres. Deleon’s Tremor Fantasma is the more consistently enjoyable of the two’s most recent albums; it’s streaming in its entirety here.

The opening cut is a bhangra groove with hypnotic vocal harmonies and keening steel guitar; later on, another track reminds of Indian-influenced British folk-rock from the 70s. One particularly killer cut here is the brooding Bie Sarika, with a luscious web of flanged banjos mingling with roaring slide guitar as it winds out. La Muerte Chiquita, a reggae tune with steel pans, has a similarly flamenco-inflected feel, followed by Los Bibilicos, another reggae cut that builds from spaghetti western ambience on the wings of a soaring brass arrangement.

Buena Semana kicks off by blending jangly soukous guitar, those steel pans again and hints of American country music and rises to a soaring, anthemic art-rock interlude. Lamma Bada works a haunting, slowly syncopated spaghetti western/Arabic psychedelic rock groove, while Ansi Dize la Novia takes a west African kora riff and makes bouncy Middle Eastern stoner rock out of it. With its echoey vibraphone and searing guitar leads, Para Que Quiero takes a French ye-ye pop theme and builds it into psychedelic reggae-rock..

Barrinam coyly finds the missing link between Mexican banda music and bluegrass. The album ends with A la Nana, an absolutely creepy, stately minor key banjo waltz and then a brave attempt to turn a Turkish folk tune into chicha.

Jaffa Road’s new Where the Light Gets In is just as diverse and should be just as good but isn’t. How come? The band are all excellent musicians, they draw eclectically and imaginatively from styles around the globe, they write interesting, counterintuive songs and they sound like they’d be a lot of fun to see live. What could possibly be wrong with this picture? Schlocky production. The stench of stale cheese pervades this album. Case in point: a pensive Aaron Lightstone oud solo can’t just be left alone as it it is, it has to have a useless synthesizer track grafted to it. Alto saxophonist Sundar Viswanathan, who adds an welcome unpredictable edge throughout the album, leads the band into the one interlude that they could take into genuine jazz territory…and suddenly a computerized drum track stomps the life out of it.

Cheesy canned beats, dated trip-hop cliches and halfhearted rap and corporate-rock tropes pop up like ads in your favorite video: they’re annoying to the point where you reach for the mute, or simply click off. Which is too bad, because at the top of their game this band is every bit as good as Deleon. Groups like this you root for, you want them to succeed, especially when they can come up with a track like the haunting rai-rock of The Mist of Your Eyes, or the lusciously swirling psychedelic Bollywood vamp Hamidbar Medaber. It’s frustrating when they don’t, especially since that may not be their fault – a manager or producer may be to blame. Memo to musicians: corporate pop is dead and has been for decades. Nobody over the age of eight wants to hear it, or anything associated with it. Nobody listens to corporate radio either, except for sports or the weather. We’re in a new century now. Get with the program.

Free Download For the Japonize Elephants’ Amazing New Album

The Japonize Elephants are giving away their new album Melodie Fantastique. Too good to be true – but it is true. The giveaway starts 12/12 at midinght and goes all day (these folks being a San Francisco band, one assumes that this is happening on Pacific time). It’ll be high on the 50 best albums of 2012 list when that goes live here at the end of the year – and it can be yours. If gypsy rock, art-rock, funny surreal country songs or Middle Eastern music – or all of the above – are your thing, grab this mighty monstrosity. The download link isn’t up yet but it will be somewhere here. This is a kickoff for their US State Department-sponsored world tour – strange but true!

Exhilarating, Eclectic, Gypsy-Fueled Sounds from the Japonize Elephants

The Japonize Elephants have a new record, Melodie Fantastique, just out, and it’s everything you would expect from the well-loved, cinematic circus rock orchestra. As usual, it’s trippy beyond belief, full of sly humor and ferocious playing. Calling them a gypsy band would be somewhat accurate but not completely. There’s also a steampunk streak that runs through frontman/guitarist Sylvain Carton’s songs like a rocket to Mars launched from the 1886 Paris Exposition. In their alternate universe, bluegrass, noir cabaret, gypsy music, klezmer, movie themes and vintage Lebanese sounds all coexist simultaneously in the same song, more or less. There is no other band on the planet who sound remotely like them.

One of the reasons is Jeremy Baron’s banjo, whose fluid frailing anchors the romping, gypsy-flavored tunes and adds a brisk, rustic country edge. Jason Slota plays tersely echoey, sometimes otherworldly lines on his vibraphone alongside the sizzling twin violins of Megan Gould and Dina Maccabee (also of the deliciously eclectic Real Vocal String Quartet). The jazzier passages are carried by the sax and flute of Mitch Marcus and Chris Hiatt. Calling them an orchestra is not overstating the case: there are a lot of people in this band.

A vaudevillian joke and then a nimbly scampering gypsy-rock tune kick off the album. The title track is the most majestically breathtaking of all the songs, a shapeshifting instrumental that’s part noir tango, part levantine overture, part klezmer dance and part bluegrass, and ends in the last place you would expect it to. The Ancient Mariner’s Boat Show follows it, a twisted, menacing bolero, and then a skronky diptych that sounds like the Lounge Lizards covering the Ventures. You want eclectic?

Gould’s intense Middle Eastern violin solo is the high point of the the uneasily cinematic Call the Zagorsky, followed by the surreallistically lovely oldtime country ballad Breusters, which wouldn’t be out of place in the Balthrop Alabama catalog from a few years ago. The Publisher’s Clearing House Special is a gypsy rock update on the Tubes’ What Do You Want from Life, a cautiomary tale for anyone who might want to rent Dollywood for a week

They go back to vaudevillian and sarcastic with the swaying waltz Lord Crin Crin, follow that with a grinning Spike Jones-style interlude and then Whiskey Willie II, a jaunty bluegrass tune about a bum whose life is about to take an unexpected turn (the stories in these songs are frequently too good to give away). La Vida Callejon Rapida makes fun of Mexican ranchera dramatics, while Fiddle Three takes an Irish reel and adds horns and vibraphone as if every Irish band in the world had them. There’s also the faux-lounge theatrics of Swimming Upstairs, the Zappa-tinged, distantly Middle Eastern This Zorlockian Anthem, a LMAO parody of birthday songs, a couple of droll piano miniatures by Marcus and an unexpectedly straight-up cover of Stardust. Is there anything else they possibly could have included here? A baby’s arm holding an apple? This one’s a lock for one of the best albums of the year: serious Top Ten material.

Twisted, Sick Stuff from Larry and His Flask

Larry and His Flask bridge the gap between grasscore and gypsy punk with a bunch of funny songs. Punk rock at its best isn’t just assaultive, it’s fun, and that’s exactly what these guys bring to the party. They’re twisted and sick – and they’re excellent musicians. Their popularity is yet another reminder of how much of an audience there is for party music that isn’t stupid, that hasn’t been focused-grouped to death. Their new album Hobo’s Lament might be their best yet: they sound like they’re an awful lot of fun live. They’re at Webster Hall on Sept 29 and 30 at around 7.

The first track, Closed Doors is electric spaghetti western grasscore. Social Distortion might have gone in this direction if Mike Ness had more goth in him; the sarcastic little joke midway through will get a chuckle out of everybody. Big Ride is a politically incorrect anthem about the big party to end all big parties, complete with wryly ornate bvox and a trumpet-fueled gypsy punk outro. My Name Is Cancer is just as sick: over a lickety-split punkgrass groove (with an excellent, creepy mandolin break), the Big C wants everybody to know that he’s coming for your children!

The title track is a punked out swing tune told from the morose point of view of a bum who crashes a party. Likewise, the album’s last two tracks, a brisk, gypsyish shuffle and a distorto guitar jazz crooner ballad, have the suspicious feel of parodies. Larry and His Flask take nothing seriously but the music. Albums like this only make you wonder how many other Larries there might be out there, chugging on their flasks, playing punk rock in their friends’ parents’ garages, pondering their next move.